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U.S. Attack Kills 32 in Sadr City

Iraqis in Baghdads Sadr City chanted and carried coffins of people who were killed in a raid by American forces.Credit
Wissam al-Okaili/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

BAGHDAD, Aug. 8 — An American raid and airstrike killed 32 people in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City on Wednesday, in what American military officials described as an assault on a militant network bringing in money and bombs from Iran.

The American attack coincided with an expanded curfew across Baghdad for a Shiite religious festival welcoming tens of thousands to the capital, and with a trip to Iran by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for discussions about security.

Hospital officials in the Sadr City district of Baghdad said that the American airstrike had killed or wounded several civilians, including a child, though the military disputed that account.

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman here, said the airstrike was called in against suspected gunmen who were surrounding a vehicle and who were moving toward American troops who had been taking fire. He said 30 people around the vehicle were killed, and 2 more died during the raid, all of them combatants.

“They called in an airstrike on a tactical formation of individuals, on people who were operating as a tactical unit,” Colonel Garver said. “Those are the ones who were hit.”

American military raids causing Iraqi deaths, particularly in Sadr City, frequently lead to conflicting stories. Residents describe some or all of the victims as innocent, while American military statements typically describe those killed by American weapons as militants. In most cases, neither side can provide definitive proof.

Colonel Garver said intelligence indicated that at least one of the intended targets of the raid — in which 12 people were detained — acted as a liaison between the elite Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and the Shiite Iraqi militias responsible for killing American troops with lethal roadside bombs known as explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s. He declined to provide evidence about any link between the groups or to say whether troops found bomb-making materials in the buildings that they raided.

“As we exploit information and we’re ready to release information, we will,” he said.

In Tehran, Mr. Maliki began a three-day visit to hold talks on easing violence in Iraq and to seek Iran’s assistance to help bring Sunni Iraqis into the government, the Fars News Agency reported. Fars, a semiofficial agency with close ties to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, quoted an unnamed Iraqi official as saying that Mr. Maliki was in Tehran to ask Iran to speak to powerful Sunni countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to encourage Iraqi Sunnis to rejoin the political process. Mr. Maliki is under pressure to share more power with Sunni Arabs.

Photo

An Iraqi soldier tested people for traces of explosives as they assembled for a Shiite religious festival in Baghdad on Wednesday.Credit
Spencer Platt/Getty Images

He is expected to meet with Mr. Ahmadinejad; Ali Larijani, the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council; and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme religious leader, the Islamic Republic News Agency reported. The trip is Mr. Maliki’s third to Iran since he became prime minister. He lived in Iran much of the time he was in exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule.

Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, imposed a ban on driving in the capital as thousands of Shiite pilgrims began moving toward a shrine to mark the anniversary of the death of a revered figure, Imam Musa al-Kadhim.

Lt. Col. Steven M. Miska, deputy commander of the brigade responsible for the area around the shrine, said American troops were working carefully to protect pilgrims and reduce tensions with Iraqi security forces.

Colonel Miska described cooperation with Iraqi troops as “a complex relationship” after a clash that erupted in April between some of his units and men in Iraqi Army uniforms. Iraqi officials accused the Americans of attacking a mosque serving as the headquarters of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, a charge the Americans denied. Colonel Miska and his men said the battle confirmed that some of the Iraqi security forces they aimed to help were in fact filled with militiamen who were their enemies.

In Basra, one British soldier was killed during fighting overnight, military officials said. In Diyala Province, fighting broke out in a Shiite area on the outskirts of Khalis. The clashes began Tuesday; at least 10 people were killed, the authorities said.

In Samarra, a Sunni area and the site of a revered Shiite mosque known as the Golden Dome that has twice been bombed, witnesses said that mortar attacks killed at least three women and two children. Two other children were wounded. In the northern, ethnically and religiously mixed city of Kirkuk, a roadside bomb killed at least one policeman and wounded nine others, the police said.

Early Release for 2 Marines

CAMP PENDLETON, Calif., Aug. 8 (AP) — Two marines who pleaded guilty in the case of a slain Iraqi civilian have been released from military prison four months early.

The two, Tyler A. Jackson and Jerry E. Shumate Jr., had been demoted from corporal to private and sentenced to 21 months in prison as part of plea deals in which they admitted to aggravated assault and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Both were released Monday to “ensure fair treatment,” the Marines said in a statement.

Lt. Gen. James N. Mattis, who is overseeing the case, weighed their “military experience, relative rank and position of authority and their specific involvement in the death of the Iraqi man,” the statement said.

The Iraqi civilian was pulled from his Hamdaniya home and shot in April 2006. An AK-47 and shovel were placed nearby to make him look like an insurgent planting a bomb, according to the prosecution.

Reporting was contributed by Nazila Fathi from Tehran, and Qais Mizher, Wisam A. Habeeb and Karim Hilmi from Baghdad.

A version of this article appears in print on , on page A3 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Attack Kills 32 in Shiite Stronghold of Sadr City. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe